'Who Governs' the Berlin Metropolitan Region?
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‘Who governs’ the Berlin metropolitan region? The strategic-relational construction of metropolitan space in Berlin-Brandenburg spatial and economic development policies Enrico Gualini and Carola Fricke Institute of Urban and Regional Planning Technische Universität Berlin – Berlin University of Technology RC21 Conference Urbino 2015 session G5: Governing Metropolitan Cities Abstract ‘Who governs’ the Berlin metropolitan region? Berlin is an unusual case of metropolitan rescaling, and the Berlin metropolitan region anything but a unitary ‘policy space’. On the one hand, post-reunification Berlin has been involved in institutional initiatives for constituting metropolitan space through territorial reforms as well as in experimenting new comprehensive frameworks for conjoint intergovernmental governance. On the other hand, territorial reforms have been progressively demised in favor of policy- based intergovernmental cooperation, while reference to the policy concept of ‘metropolitan region’ has not led to any specific initiatives in institution building. Between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s, the rise and fall of territorial hypotheses of building a metropolitan region has been backed by the consolidation of practices of flexible, ad-hoc and functionally targeted institutional cooperation. The open policy framework represented by designation as metropolitan ‘capital region’ has turned into a branding and legitimizing device for a loosely-coupled approach to policy-based cooperation which, while not questioning institutional and territorial settings, flexibly mobilizes interests and resources towards performative development goals. Accordingly, rescaling in the Berlin metropolitan region is not occurring in a comprehensive political-institutional form, as an ‘explicit project’. The more significant, however, is that rescaling is occurring, as an ‘implicit project’, through governance practices and discourses which constitute a variety of understandings of metropolitan space. The paper addresses how understandings of metropolitan space are being constituted in current spatial and economic development policies for Berlin-Brandenburg. It follows the hypothesis that no single-unitary understanding of metropolitan space exists in Berlin as an explicit expression of a ‘metropolitan project’, but rather a heteronomy of metropolitan discourses and practices which express different and possibly competing ‘implicit’ metropolitan projects. ‘Metropolitan space’ is therefore seen as an emerging construct defined by strategic-relational interplays between public and private actors and by the selective involvement of their interests and resources in the domain of specific spatial- economic development policies. Analysing the discursive construction of metropolitan space within specific policy arenas therefore offers a significant perspective on ‘who governs’ metropolitan development and on how this is possibly tied to the emergence of hegemonic understandings of scalar references for metropolitan policies. contact: Prof. Dr. Enrico Gualini, Carola Fricke MA Chair of Planning Theory and Urban-Regional Policy Analysis ISR – Institute of Urban and Regional Planning Technische Universität Berlin – Berlin University of Technology Hardenbergstr. 40a, D - 10623 Berlin [email protected], [email protected] http://www.planningtheory.tu-berlin.de 0. Introduction Metropolitan space as strategic-relational construct The paper addresses the question of ‘who governs’ the Berlin metropolitan region through an inquiry on how understandings of metropolitan space are being constituted in current spatial and economic development policies for Berlin-Brandenburg. It is based on the observation that, under current political-institutional conditions, there is anything but a unitary ‘policy space’ in the Berlin metropolitan region. This empirical observation supports our theoretical hypothesis that – in Berlin as elsewhere – metropolitan space is being constructed and re-defined in different policy arenas and according to different rationales of governance and regulation. Accordingly, the construction of metropolitan space in the Berlin region is not occurring in a comprehensive political-institutional form, as an explicit ‘metropolitan project’, or as what is often implied by the expression ‘political rescaling’. Even more significant is the fact that an ‘explicit’ metropolitan project is being displaced. This means that the construction of metropolitan space is occurring, in more ‘implicit’ ways, through a variety of policy practices and discourses which constitute diverse and partially competing understandings of metropolitan space. While no single-unitary or consistent understanding of metropolitan space exists in Berlin as expression of an effective ‘metropolitan project’, a heteronomy of metropolitan discourses and practices has been emerging which express different and possibly competing ‘implicit’ metropolitan projects. ‘Metropolitan space’ is therefore seen as an emerging construct defined by – and as a ‘stake’ of – the strategic-relational interplay between public and private policy actors and by the selective involvement of their interests and resources in specific policies domains. In particular, this paper discusses a significant shift, which occurred in the last decade in practices contributing to the construction of metropolitan space, from the domain of institutional reforms and intergovernmental territorial cooperation to the sphere of ‘active’ spatial-economic development policies. Analysing the construction of metropolitan space within specific policy arenas may therefore offer a significant perspective on ‘who governs’ metropolitan development and on how this relates to the emergence of new hegemonic understandings of the scalar references for metropolitan policies. Rescaling as ‘explicit’ and as ‘implicit’ project This paper understands the construction of metropolitan space as a process of rescaling. It relates ‘scale’ and ‘rescaling’ to phenomena of redefining the spatial reference of policy and governance practices in relation to emergent (and selectively perceived) spatial development issues. It is therefore embedded in research and theorizing on the ‘political economy of scale’ and a contribution to its empirical underpinning. Metropolitan policy and governance, in a perspective of ‘political economy of scale’, are instances of more general processes of de- and re-territorialization related to internal (endogenous) and external (exogenous) challenges affecting the nation state as a site of socio-economic regulation. The struggle for reconfiguring the spatiality of the state, as a condition for its capacity of socio- economic regulation, paradigmatically questions ‘nested’ territorial relationship between local, regional and national levels of government and governance – and related geographical assumptions – and leads to developing policy and governance forms aimed at “rearticulating the relationship between organizations and tasks across this divide on whatever territorial scale(s) the state in question acts” (Jessop 2002: 199). The emergent and constructed character – in strong contrast to any attempt at quasi-natural, objectivating definitions – of metropolitan regions as policy objects is a paradigmatic expression of such phenomena (cf. Brenner 2003, 2004). Under such conditions, spatial policy and governance become emergent, experimental practices in which a redefinition of scalar frames for agency is co- constitutively implicated. Gualini and Fricke – RC21 Conference Urbino 2015 session G5: Governing Metropolitan Cities 2 The resulting governance arrangements can be framed either by belonging to distinct domains – e.g. according to political-institutional criteria of division or complementarity of tasks – or, as is often the case, by belonging to co-extensive, overlapping and possibly conflicting domains, potentially implying a lack of political-institutional coherence. These frames, in turn, are co-constitutively related to the scalar definition of their action rationale. A potential tension may therefore arise across governance practices developing at different scales. The result is the emergence of forms of multiscalar governance (Jessop 2004), involving a rearticulation of spatial governance arenas beyond ’nested’ territorial hierarchies, as well as of practices of multiscalar metagovernance (Jessop 2009) as the attempt to realize effective coordination of governance practices across scales beyond hierarchical rule and authoritarian coordination. Scale compatibility – or ‘compossibility’ (Jones and Jessop 2010) emerges therefore as an issue of coexistence and consistency between governance rationales in a context defined by institutional fragmentation and scale redundancy. A perspective of ‘political economy of scale’ emphasizes therefore the challenges and contradictions – and the potentials for governance failure – involved in rescaling practices leading to the emergence of new state scalar configurations (cf. Brenner 2004; Jessop 2002, 2009). According to this theoretical framework, we understand metropolitan space in a dual way: in an anti- essentialist way, as a co-evolutionary outcome of scaling processes and, in a constructivist co- evolutionary way, as a strategic-relational outcome of practices of governance and regulation which selectively address these processes. This means that the spatial features of metropolitan regions – and, as their characteristic feature, their changing scalar definition